Connecting Through Code: My Week as a #WeAreRLadies Curator
2025-06-18
👋🏿 Introduction
- Hi, I’m Njoki 💜
- Data Analyst at the University of Oxford (HEOR team)
- Biostatistics background, currently studying MSc in Statistics and Data Science (Hasselt University)
- Passionate about R, community, and inclusive spaces
💜 R-Ladies Nairobi
- Reintroducing the R-Ladies Nairobi Chapter
- Originally started in 2020 🎉
- Shout out to our founding organisers: Faith Musili, Shel Kariuki & Maggie Wanjiru
- Welcoming our new co-organisers: Happiness Ndanu & Agnes Ndiragu
- We’re back and active!
👉 Keep an eye on our Meetup page for upcoming events!
🎯 Why I Curated #WeAreRLadies
- I wanted to share my journey and give back to a community that shaped me 💬
- Highlight diverse voices, experiences, and projects in R
- Encourage others to feel seen and inspired 💡
🗓️ Preparing for the Week
- Planned themed posts for each day:
- My journey into R 📚
- What I do + side projects 💼
- Favorite R packages 📦
- Lessons from the community (rainbowR, ShinyConf) 🌈
- Used Quarto to draft posts and organised content visually
🧵 Daily Threads & Engagement
- Shared how I use R in my work: data wrangling, analysis, and creating dashboards
- Discussed packages like
{tidylog}, {quarto}, {golem}, and {ellmer}
- Asked the community to share their favourite R packages, projects, and workflows
- Loved seeing how others use R creatively! 💬
✨ Highlights from the Week
- Conversations about using R for everyday tasks like menu planning or gift selection 🎁
- Showcased my journey from student to analyst to community builder
- Talked about Shiny dashboards for LGBTQ+ film data 📽️
🗺️ TidyTuesday: First Treemap
- Participated in #TidyTuesday Week 18 — NSF Grant Terminations under the Trump Administration
- Created my first-ever treemap using
{treemapify} 📦
- Visualised grant terminations by NSF directorate and division
- Opened up a great conversation on improving clarity and accessibility in data viz
- A fun and practical way to level up my R & ggplot skills!
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TidyTuesday Treemap
📚 Book & Resource Shoutouts
🛠️ {tidylog} – your R co-pilot!
With {tidylog}, you get friendly messages that help track changes at each step of your data pipeline — great for debugging and learning!
💬 Conversations That Stood Out
- Replies from people who also started with R in uni or self-taught
- Shared side projects: automating reports, building Shiny dashboards, analysing personal data
- It’s amazing how diverse our use cases are
💡 Reflections
- Curating helped me see how far I’ve come 📈
- Gave me confidence to share my voice
- Started new conversations + connected with people I wouldn’t have met otherwise
- Writing threads helped clarify my own thinking ✍️
🫶🏿 Gratitude & Takeaways
- Thank you, We Are R-Ladies team, for the opportunity
- We grow by showing up, sharing, and supporting each other
- If you’re thinking of curating – go for it!
- The R community is what we make it 💜